101Florals : Cosmos, Inked!

Tonight I was getting ready for my Tools of the Trade Class at MCAD and I got lost in messing around with ink. I figured since I was already covered in black ink, I might as well keep going, so I made my pattern tonight with the tools I had handy.
I love that school. Also - I can't believe that it 's starting already.
Where did the summer go? I'm not sure.

Either way, it's nice to break out the ink and do some florals by hand this time.
I did a page of icons, scanned them, cleaned them up and tossed them around. I like how random they are.



Here's what it looks like repeated!

And here's what it looks like before all the coloring and tossing!



I'm in my 9th year of teaching. I'm not sure how that happened either, but hey, at least I'm headed into a fun semester.
Keeping busy, that's for sure.

This week is going to be a doozy, I've got my first week of school to teach for one of the two schools I'm teaching at this semester (MCAD is school #1, and CVA is school #2!!, a doctors appointment (no one ever looks forward to those...), Work #1 (Paper Bicycle) and Work #2 (Light Grey Art Lab) ... and hopefully some personal art in there for the upcoming shows.

But! If all goes well, I'll be rewarded by smiling faces at school and some awesome long awaited packages in the mail. Wish me luck! Agh!

Biker Doodle: Frederick

Frederick is amazingly dexterous for a man his age. He believes it is the biking and the reading. He usually carries a book with him to read at a coffee shop or to share with someone on the bus.

101 Florals : Ouch. Prickly.

I just got back from a trip to the Virgin Islands, where I saw my fair share of cacti growing off of the rocky cliffs.

My friend Atom made a point to try and gather as much plant life as he could while we were there (not a good idea) so he could take it home with him to good old Minnesota. (This was, of course, after repeated warnings that customs would get him on his way back in.)

I remember after a couple days of gathering seeds and little plant cuttings - we went on a guided tour where the guide told us there were poisonous plants all over the island of St. Thomas.

This didn't stop him from continuing to gather specimens til the end of our trip.



Which he promptly ditched at the airport after seeing how intense the customs guys were!

I chose to focus more on the cacti-element than the actual prickly pear.
Here's an endless field of pointy cacti.

101 Florals : Magnolia Jumper

Colorway one of my magnolia ditzy pattern (calico)

Let me tell you a story...

It's very seldom I get a chance to go shopping. I mean, actually go shopping, like, in a real store. These days it's been hard to find the time to go out for a couple hours and just browse.

So. To combat that, I spend a lot of time putting all sorts of things in various digital shopping carts, amassing hundreds of dollars of things, then closing my browser window. It's some kind of fake shop-therapy, I think.

The most dangerous times are when I am actually near my purse and I'm doing these things, -- or if some stores make it easy to pay with paypal. Then it's all over.
One time in particular, I was on one of my favorite clothing sites and saw a kind of harem-pant style floral jumper, I put it in my cart, and before I could talk myself into closing the browser window, I bought it, along with a million other things I shouldn't have.

I don't know how many of you have seen me, but I'm about one foot tall, and I believe that most clothes that you see on the models are built for someone that has a torso that is longer than an inch. So I get this thing in the mail a couple days later, put it on and I look like a cheap circus clown with a saggy top and lumpy knickers.


Now, this would be the colorway of choice if I were to wear a granny night-gown or a floral shoulder-less shirt!

I will now leave you with that thought as you stare into the depths of my ditzy-floral-print. If I ever design a line of jumpers, this would be the pattern I'd want on it.


Here's the original ink drawing I used to make this limited-negative-space pattern!

Also posted on 101florals.blogspot.com

Biker Doodle: Dolores

She lives with her dad, who is a meteorologist and calls her Dolly. She knows a lot about the weather because of it. She doesn't know where her mom is.

Biker delay

This week's biker will be posted on Thursday!